via Scripting News - Ole Eichhorn's review of "How Would You Move Mount Fuji", a book about puzzles as technical interview questions. Looks like this should be prescribed reading for my students.

The review includes links to a number of technical interview websites one of which I particulary like - http://techinterview.org/ - especially the bad king puzzle ;-)

The role of puzzles in, for example, Microsoft's selection process reminds me somewhat of one of the final year exam papers that used to be set in my Department - a general problem paper the questions of which were set by every member of staff and that could encompass any aspect of the four years of undergraduate study in Computer Science. Personally, I think we should bring back such a paper as the trend nowadays is to be too focussed on our own narrow domains of interest with little or no cross-fertilisation. I suspect this is why companies like Microsoft use puzzles in their interview process - to sort out those that are merely good at factual recall from those that are good at applying their knowledge and skills in new situations.